It’s all a storm in teacup for “gay-friendly” Arlene

Posted By: November 01, 2016

“In outlandish Arlene, the spirit of Ian Paisley senior lives… [Paisley] was always at his most outrageous when accused. Posing in red beret at the head of marching men? How dare anyone mention paramilitarism. Point to a Paisley statement that claimed X, and he roared that it said Y – and that the pointer was “an IRA stooge, a communist, more than likely drunk.” Younger readers may not recall how much Trump there was in Paisley…Foster may not claim the hot line to God that the party founder liked to invoke, but she will not be criticized.”Fionnula O’Connor. Irish News (Belfast). Tuesday, November 1, 2016

HAS she not the right to block gay marriage since her people want that? It was a lowering question, even before Arlene Foster announced without blinking that the DUP has many gay voters and she knows many gay people who do not want marriage.

It was dispiriting enough when the answer seemed to be that yes, ‘her people’ do indeed want her to deny gay couples a law that Britain enjoys, to keep Northern Ireland the only part of the UK where single-sex marriage is illegal.

Using a mechanism, as the DUP leader has announced her intention to do, written into the Good Friday Agreement to protect a minority. In this case announced to effectively dismiss the mere introduction of a proposal to support gay marriage.

Then Foster called the criticism of her move a storm in a teacup and claimed validation from the ‘many’ gay DUP voters, and her many gay acquaintances.

We are meant to take this on trust, plainly, like her equally striking announcement as she geared up for her first conference as leader, that abuse from gay rights campaigners on social media was more likely to harden her position – what a thought – than to change her mind. (Though within 24 hours the party denied that online abuse decided its policies.)

‘Foster in gay DUP claim’ in one interview, Foster washes hands of subsidies scandal in a second; they topped off a showy week. She headed the department responsible for most of the time the green energy subsidy operated, but it was developed by officials, she said. Blame the civil servants; never an impressive response.

That photograph she posed for alongside self-described UDA leader Dee Stitt? She regretted that he became the story. This is an unblushing leader of an unembarrassable party.

But some distraction was called for. So we get ‘many’ gay DUPpers, and voters.

In outlandish Arlene, the spirit of Ian Paisley senior lives. The “Scourge of Sodomy [Paisley] was always at his most outrageous when accused. Posing in red beret at the head of marching men? How dare anyone mention paramilitarism. Point to a Paisley statement that claimed X, and he roared that it said Y – and that the pointer was “an IRA stooge, a communist, more than likely drunk”. Younger readers may not recall how much Trump there was in Paisley.

Foster may not claim the hot line to God that the party founder liked to invoke, but she will not be criticized. Gay campaigners who doubt her understanding of ‘many’ gay hearts can expect to be belittled. Unless… on top of her teacup moment did the performances get a bit out of hand? The Dublin government talking up Brexit border problems because of its own instability and talking down the northern economy? This week’s Irish government-sponsored ‘civic dialogue’ on Brexit an “absolute sideshow” of political “grandstanding”?

Foster may have to soft-pedal her own grandstanding, though business people of Unionist background who head south had best be resolute. The spectacle of schools closed, gardaí threatening to strike and a simmering leadership challenge inside the Taoiseach’s party is unnerving, true. But it is never a sign of clear thinking when politicians accuse others of playing politics.

Probably the wildest Foster statement to her party conference was that Brexit is the UK’s “biggest economic opportunity for decades”. Britain’s Brexiters talk that language as well, bereft as they clearly are of a negotiating plan, scrambling to explain how Nissan has been coaxed to stay put. They do, however, have the advantage of being part of a bigger island, not offshore to another offshore.

As Unionists have always done, today’s Brexiteer variety deny the real circumstances of this place’s economy. To be an offshore appendage with the looming prospect of an EU border drawn on top of Ireland’s internal border is too daunting to acknowledge. The answer for the moment is to badmouth Dublin for proposing a joint approach. Internal DUP worries about Brexit and how little influence they can expect over the May government’s negotiation may be well-hidden, though they surely must exist.

Foster knows that her wider party, reared on rough talk, lap up any amount of kick-shins insult directed at traditional targets: Ulster Unionists, Dublin governments, agitators for liberal reform – very different, they must now realize, to the content same-sex partners all this time discreetly in their midst.

What was that about building a new Northern Ireland? Instead of vision,top-of-the-heap Arlene presents the fiction of a gay-friendly party. Her people need more than fantasy.

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